


You, Me, and the Monster

by AkumaStrife



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-04
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 11:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1031021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AkumaStrife/pseuds/AkumaStrife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They pull Piers out of the ocean and patch him up as best they can, but some things will never be the same. Chris can't forgive himself and Piers doesn't trust himself, and between them is a chasm of things unspoken.</p>
<p>[Alternatively: Hospital Recovery fic in which Piers has to learn to live with the thing he's become.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	You, Me, and the Monster

Piers wakes up three times during his operations, his blood burning and everything aching like he’s being cut apart. He tries to scream, but he can’t hear anything at all and his mouth feels numb. He feels cut off; trapped inside himself with the blistering heat of something that sits heavy on the back of his tongue. Something familiar that prods at him, but he still can’t focus on the thoughts and hazy, jumbled images just out of reach. 

His body jerks. Hard. His body moves of its own accord and his right arm—what’s left of it, what its become—jolts up and crackles with blinding white light that leaves spots in his blurry vision. Makes his eyes focus for a scant second (medical equipment and doctors in hazard suits and the grotesque parasite posing as his limb) before he’s blinking rapidly against the sharp light. 

It hits him, then. The images and information and distant shouts of someone pleading with him hit him like a freight train. 

_The C-Virus. Ada Wong. The mutation. The B.O.W._

_Captain._

His hearing swings back in for a moment, in and out like passing traffic. Shrill beeping machinery and people shouting. Something that sounds like a blow torch, or maybe a saw. And then everything fades again. He feels even more sluggish than before, heavy and detached and the pulsing in his arm lulling somewhat. 

He sinks down inside himself, and wonders where Chris is. 

He’s not out for long, though. The mutated cells, the new DNA, rushing through his body burns through the tranquilizers like an animal tied down with dental floss. 

He’s out until they begin working on his arm, cutting and burning and tearing alien flesh. It’s like there are wasps inside him, working themselves up into a murderous frenzy. His arm throbs and trembles. 

_It_ hits him without warning—the virus—and he jerks and gasps like a fish on land, eyes wide but murky with infection. The pain is so intense he almost can’t feel it, and bites through his lip because he’s a soldier at his core and even now his gut reaction is to bear it as best he can. 

Somewhere to his left is the sharp bite of a swear word, before someone’s mopping at the blood on his chin and neck, and yelling for more sutures. 

There’s heat. And something snapping and cracking and _breaking_. 

They’re trying to amputate his arm, but his arm’s fighting back. He can’t see it, but he can sense it. Like the mutation has a consciousness almost, bumping against his own. It’s growing new cartilage around the vulnerable nerves and muscle. Twisting and thickening into an impenetrable shield. 

There’s frenzy around him, and something screams—a power tool. 

But there’s only sparks and a loud snap and the tool whining as it sputters out. 

They try everything, but it all breaks against his arm, and he relaxes somewhat. Drifts close to the edge of sleep, as his arm pulses slowly against his shoulder. Like a heart beat. Pulses until it sinks up with his own and all at once feels very safe, and very tired. 

They can’t hurt him anymore. 

His arm flushes with warmth that settles over him, and they both surrender to the tranquilizers 

 

* * *

 

He’s asleep, and then suddenly fiercely _awake_. Like an animal. His mouth is dry and his eyes gummed up with sleep and medication. A wave of nausea rolls over him and he has to close his eyes tightly—his vision is uneven, warped like he’s looking through a scope with both eyes open. The right one burns at being exposed to the air. Something dry and scratchy pulls at what must be exposed flesh around it. He doesn’t know how he does, but he has this feeling the bandages are what’s keeping it from healing. 

He tries to yank them off, but his fingers are numb and clumsy, and thick restraints keep his arms close to the bed. For a moment he feels helpless and his throat tightens with emotion he’s supposed to have learned to suppress, but then it shoots through him: strength and feral resolve. The arm that isn’t his bubbles and shifts beneath the constricting cast and he yanks free of the restraints. 

His room is dark and smells like death. He _feels_ the night more than anything, feels it in air heavy with silence and the hum of machines, feels it in the vast emptiness of the building. He shouldn’t be able to, but he does. He feels it like a firm boot pressing down on his ribs. 

He’s always hated hospitals. 

The fringes of claustrophobia creep in and before he knows what he’s doing he’s surged out of the bed and pain shoots up from his feet, his legs wobbly and about to give out. But something blistering pops and fizzes through his veins. The pain disappears and he feels stronger than ever. The arm that isn’t his hums. It makes him feel sick. 

He has to find the Captain. 

He must be here. Somewhere. He has to be. 

He tugs the tubes out of his skin and peels the sensors away. The machines chirp and beep rapidly in warning, but he doesn’t hear it. He yanks the bandages away from his face, feels tender skin pull and tear, but doesn’t stop for it, because the frayed edges are already starting to heal. It’s like he’s full of pop rocks and shaken soda cans, and he hardly remembers what it was like to be a kid, not many years ago. Can’t remember what it felt like to be young and light, reading comics by flashlight under the covers, before he knew the weight of holding another man’s life in his hands.     

Heavy footsteps on the floor above propel him out of the room. He ignores the voice in his head that tells him he shouldn’t be able to hear it, shouldn’t be able to know that it’s staff coming to check on the alerts the machines must be sending out. When he thinks about it too hard, his stomach twists and heaves. 

He has to find Chris. 

His bare feet are quiet against the cold linoleum scrubbed with ammonia, and lingering fumes burn the inside of his nose; the bright lights overhead make his right eye water. He keeps moving because he is a soldier. He’s a soldier trained to deal with this kind of pain and keep focused on his mission. 

He scans his floor thoroughly, quickly developing a systematic pattern, but there are only a few receptionists that watch him warily as he passes. They have rosy cheeks and cowed expressions. They don’t get up to stop him.  

When the elevator doors close, he almost gags, and quickly looks down at the floor. The reflection that looks back from the shiny steel is a cruel parody of what he used to be. This wasn’t what he signed up for. 

The longer he searches, the more hollow he feels. He wanders the floors like a ghost, something that doesn’t belong in this world anymore. His right side pulls heavily at him. 

Chris isn’t here. 

His world tilts a little more; his precarious grasp on his superimposed vision lurches in tandem with his heart and the arm. Blood pools in his right side around scar tissue and charred flesh that heals beneath temporary cartilage. He feels grotesque. And alone.

_Chris isn’t here._  

Around the corner he’s stopped by a group of three nurses: two men and a woman. They have arms like cables and expressions like tanks. He recognizes them, remembers them vaguely from the BSAA training program. They must have come with him to this place to supervise him, because they watch him like a threat, their jaws clenching visibly. He doesn’t miss the tasers in their hands, bulky weapons under their scrubs. 

Piers tries to assure them, tell them that he just wants to see his Captain, but his mouth won’t open. Can’t. He knows not to pull out the suture and the warm metal wiring his mouth shut, so he raises his arms in the universal gesture of surrender. 

The two men have guns trained on him in an instant, the woman’s gaze narrowing. But they don’t close the distance between them, don’t show any sign of stepping closer. They seem hardened and trained, but he can smell their fear. It’s acrid and crackling unease like the charged air before a thunderstorm. He feels a little like that now: a thunderstorm. Electricity sparks along his fingertips every once in a while, like a nervous tick, like releasing steam after being under pressure for too long.  

For the first time he glances down at the arm. It’s cocooned in hard plaster and an ointment that stings the mending flesh inside. It’s monstrous and he doesn’t blame them. He’s scared of it too. 

He doesn’t want them to attack him—they’re supposed to be on the same side and his heart almost stops when he realizes that they don’t see it that way anymore—but he doesn’t want to go back to that room. He tries to make them understand through eye contact alone, but he’s seen what his face looks like, for just that brief moment in the elevator. He snorts bitterly, and it hurts. 

Slowly he puts his arms down and gives them a hesitant thumbs up with his human hand. So small and fragile in comparison. 

_I understand._

The woman nods, not relaxing but motioning to the elevator. “We’ll meet you up there. If you don’t show, we’ll be forced to come look for you again.” It’s a promise of violence. Because he is the enemy. He is the monster. 

Piers nods and holds back harsh laughter. They can’t even stand to escort him properly, not when it means being stuck in a small metal box with him. 

He wonders, as he stares at his feet and listens to the floors ding by, who it was that vouched for him. Who is responsible for him still being alive, and not under armed lockdown.

He tries not to hope too much, but it’s hard.

 

* * *

 

The doctors try to bandage up his face again. Piers doesn’t know if they think it’ll actually heal that way, or if they’re sparing themselves the sight. 

He refuses to let them, and accidentally flings one of the male nurses into the wall with the arm that is not his. 

He tries to apologizes, but they’ve already stuck him with another tranquilizer.

 

* * *

 

The window in the front of Piers’ room is one-way glass, letting others observe and study him without hesitation and fear. Except, Piers knows it’s there. He can hear the footsteps and the steady thud of beating hearts on the other side. Sometimes, if he closes his human eye and focuses hard enough, his vision shifts and he can make out blurry heat signatures. 

As he heals—as the virus sinks into him more and more, becoming part of him enough that he starts to forget what it was like to be human with so many disadvantages—his senses repair themselves and slowly creep higher and higher than they used to be. As he heals he can hear conversations in the next room and outside his own, learns to recognize the patterns and gaits of various people, what their heartbeat sounds like.

It’s a useful trick, and helps pass the time. When he’s coherent that is; when he’s not bogged down with drugs or withdrawn inside himself from revulsion and dysphoria. 

He’s already smashed all the mirrors in his room. 

Even if it earned him a heavier sedative for the next three days. 

It was worth it to see the stricken looks on the nurses’ face, and how an ugly sneer had kept them from bringing any more. But they still draw the curtains open when he’s asleep. He wants to look out, but can’t. The light still hurts his eyes, and the reflection in the windows hurt even more.

 

* * *

 

The doctors take out the wire stitches that kept his mouth closed, but Piers doesn’t say much. He keeps quiet out of professional habit and besides, what’s there to say? He answers the doctors and nurses with clipped “Yes, Sir” and “No, Ma’am” and sometimes they look baffled to be addressed so formally by someone who looks like him. 

The fear is slowly replaced by pity. It’s almost worse.

Leon’s the first to visit him. They watch each other for a moment before Piers asks “Where’s the Captain?” His voice is rough and hoarse from disuse. 

“Sorry kiddo, that’s classified.” 

He’s lying, Piers can hear it in the lit of his voice and the rhythm of his pulse. Leon knows that he knows, and politely doesn’t look at the right side of his face. 

“How you feelin’ these days?” 

_Like I want to die._

 

* * *

 

Chris doesn’t know how long he’s been standing outside Piers’ room, watching his lieutenant stare at his tray of food blankly. He’s not eating, just holding his spoon and sitting very still, as if he’s listening. It’s a peculiarly deliberate action, but Chris doesn’t know what he’d be listening _to_. 

He doesn’t know how long he’s been watching Piers listen to something that isn’t there, but it’s long enough that Leon steps up beside him, quiet and patient. They stand together companionably for a while, Leon watching him instead of Piers, his look filled with more empathy than Chris previous thought possible. 

“Have you seen him yet?” 

Chris sucks in a loud breath and shakes his head. 

“The way the nurses tell it, he’s been looking for you ever since the surgery.” Leon chuckles dryly. “Gave the girls up on seventh floor quite the scare.” 

“I know,” Chris says. 

Piers drops his spoon and looks up at the window so quickly that for a moment Chris swears Piers is looking at him, _through_ him. But that’s impossible.  

Leon makes a thoughtful sound in his throat, but doesn’t comment. “It’s not your fault, you know.” 

“Yes, it is,” Chris says. Says it to the window because Piers hasn’t looked away, his eyes unblinking and more aware than he’s seen yet, and he finds he can’t look away either. The washed out white of his right eye hits him like a slap in the face. A shocking reminder that he’s no longer human, just a liability, a gamble. He’s become what Chris has spent so long despising. “I was supposed to look out for him.”

Chris watches him, little more than a broken boy, and remembers what he used to be. The adoration and poorly veiled excitement in his eyes. The overwhelming and misplaced faith. The way his pale, chapped lips formed the word _Captain._ In shout or breathed into little more than a sigh—a prayer.  

He recalls Carla’s words and they’re a knife to his heart. _With your track record, I’d hate to be a member of your team._

His team was a party of one. His team was a bright and dedicated boy, with so much ahead of him, and he couldn’t even handle that. 

“Jesus christ…” Leon huffs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I forgot how thick you can be. It’s not your fault, Chris. The kid gave his life for the BSAA and saved the world in the process, and that’s the bravest damn thing I’ve ever seen. And we got him out alive!” 

“Does he look alive to you? Is this really all that better?” Chris snaps, finally looking over at him. 

“It’s better than at the bottom of the ocean,” Leon says, and then raises an eyebrow. “He did it for _you_. Is _this_ the way you want to repay him?” 

Chris opens his mouth, but can’t find anything to say. He glances back through the window, but Piers has gone back to looking at his lap, engorged arm hidden under the blanket pulled up too high. 

With another sigh, Leon thumps his shoulder. “Either you man up and get in there, or you’re coming to get some real food with Helena and me. It doesn’t do anyone any good if you waste away in here with him.” 

“Fine. Let’s go.”

  

Inside the room, Piers strains his ears, flexes his infected fingers to keep the virus activated, listening for as long as he can to his Captain’s footsteps. 

His Captain had been here the whole time. 

For once the buzzing in his blood calms, and Piers drifts off to sleep before the next dose of sedatives is administered.

  

* * *

 

Surprisingly, Piers _does_ get visitors every once in a while. He’s tried to ignore them, but it rarely works. Sherry camps out in his room until he responds, and Leon makes god-awful jokes until Helena threatens to shoot Leon herself if Piers doesn’t play along. 

Deep down, he appreciates the effort. 

Sherry talks about Jake a lot, but Piers doesn’t see him until a otherwise uneventful day filled with tests and being poked and prodded, and scaring the various hospital personnel by following their movements through the one-way glass. 

“I thought you were supposed to have left already.”

Jake looks him over, smug, before shaking his head and quips, "I warned Redfield to keep you on a leash. The hardass shoulda listened to me." 

Piers merely sighs and gives him a pointed look. 

At the lackluster response Jake's expression falters, tense lines appearing in his forehead as he leans closer. "So puppy's all grown up then? Can't be goaded into a bit of fun anymore?" 

Piers very carefully does not look at his arm, wrapped in layer after layer of fresh bandages, and says, "Dying can do that to a person."

“You jar-heads, all so melodramatic,” Jake snorts. “If you’re going to have a perpetual stick up your ass, I might as well leave.” 

“Thanks.” 

Jake stops, hand stilling as he pulls his gloves on. “For what?” 

“Your blood has the antibodies. Didn’t reverse the mutation, obviously, but I’m alive. I’m coherent and in control, so far.” 

“Oh, that.” Jake glances towards the door and scratches the back of his neck. “No bid deal, I was givin’ it to the hospital anyways. Because Sherry asked me to.” He forces a laugh. “Girl’s got me pretty whipped, huh?” 

“Sherry told me about your lower rate.” 

Jake sniffs and thumbs his nose, before ruffling Piers’ hair and pushing his head to the side half-heartedly. “A Captain needs a lieutenant, right? Just try to stay out of trouble this time, Pup. Someone’s gotta keep Redfield in line.” 

Piers says nothing, eyes widening as Jake leaves (and doesn’t close the door all the way just to be an ass). It’s the first time anyone’s touched him without reservation. His eyes burn and his throat tightens.

 

* * *

 

He spends a lot of time in that room. All his time, actually. Days and days and weeks and he’s not stupid. He knows it’s not while he’s “healing”. It’s to keep an eye on him. To keep him in one place so he can be controlled.

He’s been healed for weeks, it just doesn’t look like it. It never will. 

He burns through all the “medications” too. They’re mainly sedatives at this point, but he acts like they’re keeping him under because otherwise they’d up the dosage again and it’s always bad the first day, as the virus reshapes his insides in order to keep up with it. And he hates feeling out of control. He’d rather sit like a good little soldier and wait for them to discharge him, than let them know he’s awake far more often than not. 

But they don’t discharge him.

He waits and does as he’s told, and listens for Chris’ heartbeat outside his room. Now that he knows what to listen for, it’s easy to recognize. It’s comforting, even though it still hurts that Chris hasn’t come to see him yet. He’s been awake forever; he’s done so much and devoted himself so wholly to Chris and their mission. But he won’t enter the room, and Piers is too scared to ask for him anymore. 

He waits, and then gets tired of waiting. 

One of the doctors walks in and immediately stops short, clipboard clattering to the floor. 

The restraints on the bed hang limp to the floor, and Piers stands close enough to the window that he can look out onto the grounds without getting distracted by his own reflection. He had Sherry smuggle a uniform in days ago, and he feels better in them, a bit more normal. Almost like himself again.

“S-sir…” 

Piers turns to look at the doctor, shifting his bare arm behind him. “I want to see the Director.” 

It takes six hours and a lot of pulling rank, before he’s standing in a conference room up on the hospital’s top floor, standing at attention. Clive O’Brien radiates wariness and suspicion, but still looks at him like one of his men. It is a small mercy. 

“What’s all this about, Lieutenant?” 

“I am requesting to be put back on the team, Sir.” 

“That so?” 

Piers falters at his tone, but looks him in the eye and sets his shoulders more rigidly. “I am back to peak physical condition, and I’m sure my Captain needs me.” Sparks flicker over his fingers and he clenches his fist tightly. He’s not entirely sure how to keep it under complete control, but whatever he’s been doing has worked so far. 

Clive rubs a hand across the back of his neck, looking behind Piers. “What do you think, Captain?” 

Piers’ blood runs cold. He’s frozen in place, the sound of footsteps behind him far too loud in his ears. Vaguely he realizes it’s the mutation, his arm prickling with power.

Chris steps up beside the table, an equal distance between the Director and Piers, sparing him only a glance, but the weight in it is enough to rob Piers of all speech.

“I defer to your judgement, Sir,” Chris says. 

Clive looks between them. “Very well. Lt. Nivans, I will not clear you for duty at this time. It’s unclear whether the BSAA will ever regard you fit.” 

“What?” Piers shouts, looking accusingly at Chris before he thinks to stop himself. “Why not? Has my service not been—“

Clive silences him with a gesture. “Your service has been commendable, and we appreciate everything you’ve done in the name of the BSAA. But it doesn’t change the fact that you are infected, and therefore a variable. You are a rarity, Nivans. We can’t risk something happening on the field.” 

Chris won’t look at him. It makes him angry. 

“I’ve submitted to your damn tests for months, and that’s not enough for you? Muller’s blood saved my humanity! I’m fine!” Light crackles and pops over his arm. 

“Did it?” Clive asks.   

Piers’ anger pulses through him like a physical entity, his vision blurring. “I’m in control now, aren’t I? I may even be more help now than I was before!” 

Chris stands and holds a hand out to him, treating him like a rabid dog, like a monster, and it makes everything worse. “Piers. Calm down. We’ll figure it out.” 

Electricity rolls down his arm and he doesn’t even realize he’s shaking until he can’t stop. “Why didn’t you just kill me then? Why did you keep me alive if I’m just going to be locked up? I was saved and given a second chance—let me prove myself!” 

Chris lurches toward him, hand out as if to physically restrain him, and Piers stumbles back. “Don’t touch me!” 

An arc of electricity jumps from Piers’ arm to Chris’ hand, sizzling over his fingers. It happens too fast for Chris to look anything other than confused at first, but the scent of burning flesh fills Piers’ nose and he comes to himself for a moment, regret making his stomach drop. 

“I… I didn’t…” he stutters. For a moment everything slows as he looks down at his pulsing arm and feels the control slip through his bones. He looks up at Chris fearfully, and can’t even choke out the warning before his body jerks and his arm discharges on its own, blowing out a window behind Chris. 

He’s slammed to the floor by shouting men in biohazard gear, and the last thing he sees through the chaos is Chris’ face twisted with pain and grief. 

He looks like he’s blaming himself. 

It’s like the oil rig all over again.

  

* * *

 

Once, he thinks he wakes up to a big figure slumped over on the edge of his bed. He thinks, through the tranquilizers, there’s a hand resting over his own. Unfamiliar heat seeps through the cartilage and it’s almost enough to shake him from the tranquilizer’s control. 

But he can’t keep his eyes open and the next time he fights through the fog, he is alone.

  

* * *

 

It’s three weeks before he’s allowed to be coherent. He doesn’t look anyone in the eye. He turns away his few visitors. 

He doesn’t trust himself. 

He thinks himself sick about what he did, replaying Chris’ expression and his own crippling want over and over until it’s all he can see and he can’t manage to eat without throwing up.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t know how long has passed, since the incident, submitting to all the tests and experiments quietly. But it’s a long time, because outside his door doctors and nurses are arguing and shouting, before his door bursts open and Sherry stalks in with enough fury that Piers is taken aback. 

A nurse tries to grab her, but she struggles out of her grip and climbs onto his bed. 

He panics. 

_She’s too close. She’s going to get hurt._

She clambers over him and the restraints and sits heavily on his thighs, swatting his head repeated. “You idiot! Nobody handed a gun for the first time is going to shoot straight!” 

Piers is too stunned to do anything. 

“It wasn’t your fault, and Chris is fine! Jake was right: all you jar-heads are so thick and your martyr complex can be seen from space! Now stop sending me away and let’s talk and fix this. We can fix this.” 

Piers spends a long time crying into her shirt. 

She rubs his back, telling him quietly about the experiments she was subjected to as a little girl; about the monster she’s become too, and look how well she turned out. 

“Don’t worry, Piers,” she whispers into his hair, “Jake still loves me.”

 

* * *

 

Sherry spends the better part of two weeks with him, sometimes bringing others to see him. He’s better, when she’s around. Stops comparing himself to the B.O.W.’s and stops wanting to tear his arm off. He gets better at controlling it, once she convinces him it’s okay.

He forces himself to ask her about what happened while he was… out. She explains about Ada and Carla, what really happened with Simmons, and all he can think about was the look on Leon’s face when he tried to vouch for her, protect her, even when no one else believed him. 

He understands that look now.  

Sherry sits at the end of his bed, legs tangled with his under the soft blanket Helena brought when she tagged along with Leon once, and tells him about Claire with bright eyes and excitable grins, and the stories Claire used to tell her about Chris. After a while, after it doesn’t hurt his chest to think about Chris and all that happened before, he talks about Chris and the few stories he shared about Claire. His expression slowly begins to match hers. 

It’s all they really talk about, and one afternoon when Leon visits, he rolls his eyes and looks like he might sulk. “I’m pretty cool too, y’know.” 

“Yeah, and you’re great at not crashing vehicles,” Helena snorts.

Sherry looks to Piers and they laugh at the same time, and it feels good. Piers doesn’t remember the last time he’s laughed.  

The door opens and Chris stops in the doorway, looking at them all in surprise and a little like he was caught doing something embarrassing. He moves as if to step right back out, but Leon raises an eyebrow.

“Chris, so nice of you to finally join us.” 

“Don’t start,” he snaps. 

Leon puts his hands up in surrender, grinning cheekily. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. C’mon, Helena, I think I hear Hunnigan not feeling bad enough for all the near-death experiences she’s sent me into.” 

Helena nods and pushes off the wall, giving Chris a pointed look as she follows Leon. 

Sherry waits a beat after they’re gone before asking, “Do you think they’re watching from the window?”

Piers closes his human eye, and then nods. “They are.” 

“Well! Better go chase them off!” she says brightly, hopping to the floor. She stops in front of Chris and leans up on her toes to flick his nose. “It’s about time.” 

When she leaves and it’s just the two of them, it’s so quiet Piers can hear Chris’ erratic heartbeat. It’s not really fair, but Chris doesn’t have to know.

Chris looks away first, and busies himself with pulling a chair up to the side of Piers’ bed. “I brought burgers. Good ones, really ones, not whatever it is the cafeteria tries to pass off as food. I’ve also been talking with Director O’Brien, and I think we can get you out of this damn place.” 

Piers smiles.

 

* * *

 

When he’s discharged from the hospital on a probationary period, Piers keeps his arm close to his chest. Keeps it hidden inside coats and shifts his body to put it out of sight; his left hand gripping it tightly, as if it’s going to react on its own, as if he has to physically keep it in check. 

His arm is mangled and scarred and inhuman. It makes people uncomfortable. So revolted and morbidly curious that they can’t stop _staring_.  

He’s not… revolted by it, not really. Rather, respects and sometimes fears what its capable of. The destruction he can cause without a second thought. He doesn't need weaponry anymore, doesn't need his rifle (if they ever let him back out on the field—he doubts it). He _is_ the weapon now. Merely a tool; something to be directed and used. Experimented on and coerced into test after test. 

_For the greater good,_ they tell him. 

He misses the weight of his rifle—the security and control it gave him. Instead of this abomination that hangs off his shoulder with the weight of death and desperation. 

Piers hides his arm as often as he can inside jackets and uncomfortable angles, and Chris responds with a warm hand on his shoulder or firm against the small of his back. 

Sometimes he gets an arm around his waist, and it’s almost enough. 


End file.
